Majority bonus system in the context of "Party block voting"

Play Trivia Questions online!

or

Skip to study material about Majority bonus system in the context of "Party block voting"

Ad spacer

⭐ Core Definition: Majority bonus system

A majority bonus system (MBS, also called a minority-friendly majoritarian system) is a mixed-member, partly-proportional electoral system that gives extra seats in a legislature to the party with a plurality or majority of seats. Typically, this is done with the aim of providing government stability, particularly in parliamentary systems.

The size of the majority bonus can vary substantially, is usually a fixed number of seats, and may be conditional on the number of votes for each party. However, a relatively small majority bonus (such as in the reinforced proportionality system of Greece) may not always guarantee that a single party can form a government. At the same time, as the majority bonus is allocated in a non-compensatory manner, if the majority bonus is as high as 50%, and the largest party which has 50% of the popular vote receives it, this party may win as many as 75% of all seats available. This differentiates it from the similar majority jackpot system.

↓ Menu

>>>PUT SHARE BUTTONS HERE<<<

👉 Majority bonus system in the context of Party block voting

The general ticket or party block voting (PBV), is a type of block voting in which voters opt for a party or a team of candidates, and the highest-polling party/team becomes the winner and receives 100% of the seats for this multi-member district. The party block voting is usually applied with more than one multi-member district to prevent one team winning all seats. This system has a winner-take-all nature similar to first-past-the-post voting for single-member districts, which is vulnerable to gerrymandering and majority reversals.

A related system is the majority bonus system, where a block of seats is awarded according to the winner of party-list proportional representation.

↓ Explore More Topics
In this Dossier

Majority bonus system in the context of Parallel voting

In political science, parallel voting or superposition refers to the use of two or more electoral systems to elect different members of a legislature. More precisely, an electoral system is a superposition if it is a mixture of at least two tiers, which do not interact with each other in any way; one portion of a legislature is elected using one method, while another portion is elected using a different method, with all voters participating in both. Thus, the final results are produced by filling the seats using each system separately based on the votes, then adding the two sets of results together.

A system is called fusion (not to be confused with electoral fusion) or majority bonus, if it is an independent mixture of two system without two tiers. Superposition (parallel voting) is also not the same as "coexistence", in which different districts in the same election use different systems. Superposition, fusion and coexistence are distinct from dependent mixed electoral systems like compensatory (corrective) and conditional systems.

↑ Return to Menu